Cities and Scale in Final Fantasy

So I was just reminiscing about Final Fantasy 7 and Midgar. I remember playing it for the first time. The game really amazed me. I had really only played Golden China so I never really played any immersive games and on PlayStation I only had got Porsche Challenge (racing) and Crash Bandicoot 2 (platformer), so I was quite limited in choice. Then I played 7 and it felt like I was part of this immersive, massive city. Even though you never got to explore very much of it, it felt like a real city.

Of course, the real wow moment for me was after the Shinra building, which took about 10 hours to get to, so I thought the game must nearly be over. Then I entered the world map and truly realised how big the game actually was. That was a very special moment for me.

Anyway, I think the point for me was that Midgar was the only city that truly felt like a city in Final Fantasy. The pre-Playstation ones can be dismissed mostly because hardware limitations prevented them from being large enough to get that feel (I'm sure I'm going to be slated for saying it, but it's true for me), but none of the others really had anything that matched it, except for maybe Rabanastre in XII.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you think that other cities felt like cities in the Final Fantasy series? I also don't think it's just a Final Fantasy thing getting it right. The Imperial City in Elder Scrolls doesn't really feel like a city either. The only game that has really got the city feel that I have played would be Grand Theft Auto.

I remember getting to the Shinra HQ and also thinking the game was over! :D

I agree, Midgar really felt like a major city, which is not something that can be said for most FF towns (or RPG towns in general). FFXII was better on this, though even most of those cities didn't have the atmosphere of Midgar.

Esthar is pretty damn big. I've never found my way around that place.

Midgar and Lindblum felt truly large, unlike many others in the series.

Yeah Lindblum had a gigantic vibe. Rabanastre was also like that too.

Of course, Midgar has many story sections,residences, side areas and a lot of interiors, it definitely felt like city despite being super deformed/chibi. I think Esthar and lindblum are big too but not as big as Midgar.

Rabanastre feels like bypassing open-area plaza or an MMO guild. :/

I was truly impressed by Esthar myself. A city so big that is invisible to the eyes.

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Originally Posted by TreasonWall

Esthar is pretty damn big. I've never found my way around that place.

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I never got Esthar as being that big. It just felt like a whole lot of roads leading to places. There weren't really any interiors locations to it. Deling and Dollet seemed more like cities to me, even though they were smaller in game space.

Most RPG towns are just that: Towns.

Midgar is one of the few cities that actually feel like a city.

It is something that Square seems to have lost (Academia says hello), but the feel of Midgar is something that we'll probably never see again, because Midgar was approached differently to most other cities.

Midgar was designed with the multiple areas in mind. It was designed with a relatively self-contained story (the fight against Shinra), and designed to highlight and serve that story. It was almost built like a world of another game, with different zones and areas. You got to explore the infrastructure and the populated areas each.

Rabanastre is the closest we probably get, but it has nowhere about it that feels unique. Every quarter of the city is the same. There aren't the different areas for the different classes of citizenry. There are no run down areas. There are no areas featuring brand new architecture, none featuring the ancient structures of the city.

This is one of the major problems with cities and towns in RPGs. They are all the same. Look at Kalm. It's a mining town, and that's pretty much all it is. Corel, same thing. Rocket Town is built around the rocket. The architecture, the town design, it's all pretty much identical all the way through each of these places.

Now look at your home city. Do you have a downtown area? A suburb? An industrial area? A park? A slum?

And, as one final note on Midgar: Everything in it is separate. This doesn't seem like a big thing, but it is. Midgar has neighborhoods. The people of Sector 7 know each other, they're a tightly knit community, but they only know of Wall Market as a shopping center. When the plate comes down, it's a tragedy for all of Midgar, and yet the people in other sectors are also somewhat distanced from it, because it didn't happen to their community. This sense of distinct communities, of groups that are separated, yet still part of a greater whole, is huge.

Not only is Midgar more reflective of a real city in structure (general structure, not the floating pizza thing, smart alecks), but it's also far more reflective of the way communities within real cities grown and interact with each other.

Here we go again.

The human mind likes originality. When you get bored of something old you try something new. But you know the retort - just because it's old doesn't mean you throw it away.

The challenge for any author is bringing any plot you choose into the modern age. Final Fantasy successfully does that. It even keeps to the past better. Something we're all unfamiliar with not being born in those ages.

Side-bar: You could say FF has the best mixture of realims. Sci-Fi is all about big bad alien clobbering humanity. The Borg, The Covenant, The Skedar, and Others.

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Originally Posted by Skyblade

Rabanastre is the closest we probably get, but it has nowhere about it that feels unique. Every quarter of the city is the same. There aren't the different areas for the different classes of citizenry. There are no run down areas. There are no areas featuring brand new architecture, none featuring the ancient structures of the city.

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What about Lowtown?

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Originally Posted by The White Wizard of Fynn

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Originally Posted by Skyblade

Rabanastre is the closest we probably get, but it has nowhere about it that feels unique. Every quarter of the city is the same. There aren't the different areas for the different classes of citizenry. There are no run down areas. There are no areas featuring brand new architecture, none featuring the ancient structures of the city.

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What about Lowtown?

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Was thinking that exact same thing.

Lindblum and even Alexandria both felt huge to me! Trust me, I know when something feels huge! I still get lost in Esthar. :(

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Originally Posted by Chris

Lindblum and even Alexandria both felt huge to me! Trust me, I know when something feels huge! I still get lost in Esthar. :(

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Esthar is a good example of how not to make a city. Sure, it was huge, but it was also horribly designed, and relatively empty. The massive walkways make no sense, because there are no exits, except at the, what, five buildings that you can visit in the city? You get this view of a big, futuristic city, but it's all in the background. There's no way to access any of it. Who would build a main street that bypasses 98% of the buildings in a city?

The only one worse than Esthar that I can remember is Academia. No one would ever, ever live in a city like that. The streets, in addition to being incredibly unsafe, are simply horribly put together. You couldn't even go to the store for milk without taking twenty seven turns and probably getting lost.

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Originally Posted by Skyblade

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Originally Posted by Chris

Lindblum and even Alexandria both felt huge to me! Trust me, I know when something feels huge! I still get lost in Esthar. :(

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Esthar is a good example of how not to make a city. Sure, it was huge, but it was also horribly designed, and relatively empty. The massive walkways make no sense, because there are no exits, except at the, what, five buildings that you can visit in the city? You get this view of a big, futuristic city, but it's all in the background. There's no way to access any of it. Who would build a main street that bypasses 98% of the buildings in a city?

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But Esthar had good shops, flying cars and airport? :>
Honestly, I don't remember any explorable futuristic cities in general.

I think one of the big things that made Midgar feel like a city is the fact that you never actually got free reign of it. The fact is that 99% of a city is useless to anyone living in it, and just makes going from place to place take longer. This is wisely excluded from most game design, however it also makes them feel much less life like. We never got to see the full Midgar, so we don't ever get to see its limitations. Being able to do a full lap around a city in a couple minutes will always make it feel small, but if you play with camera angles, screen transitions and no map you can make things feel a whole lot bigger.

I feel Junon also did a good job of this.

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Originally Posted by Skyblade

The only one worse than Esthar that I can remember is Academia. No one would ever, ever live in a city like that. The streets, in addition to being incredibly unsafe, are simply horribly put together. You couldn't even go to the store for milk without taking twenty seven turns and probably getting lost.

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Not to mention Academia is incredibly unsafe. Seriously, unshielded walkways? You'd be falling the full 500 floors of the city.
But I didn't care about any of that, because the music in Academia 4XX was lovely and the place just had a lovely, upbeat atmosphere.

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Originally Posted by Aulayna

Yeah Lindblum had a gigantic vibe. Rabanastre was also like that too.

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Yeah, FFXII wasn't exactly lacking in a sense of scale.

I actually think just about every major city and location in FFIX felt absolutely huge. Even places with fewer actual people like Burmecia were quite large as far as RPG areas go.

Midgar was the original CITY in an RPG. I remember feeling that way too. Although it was silly because even at the time, I knew there was more game after the city because there were more discs, and the booklet had all these other characters, discussed the PHS system, and might have even mentioned the world map BUT it did really feel like it was a conclusion to a full game.

I can't really think of another one in the FFs to rival it.

in non-FF's:
Radiata in Radiata stories probably rivals Midgar.
Balandor in WKC is pretty good but not quite there.